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In his book, Behold the Spirit, Alan Watts writes, "For the most part, the artist works and works all his life long to become again as a child,
to regain original innocence and naturalness...Now, the question is, how can an adult, who is all fouled up, recapture that natural spontaneity?
This is what the greatest artists sweat blood trying to do...to make their work look as if it had happened by itself. The artist who practices
for years finds in the end that he cannot, by a technique of cleverness, create a worthwhile painting. Therefore, he has to give up.
Well, this "giving up" is precisely what lies behind all that we recognize as the naturalistic art of the Far East."
During one of my frequent this-painting-will-never-work-I'm-no-good periods, my husband, Charles, handed me the above quote. He had written under it,
"This is what I believe other artists see in your orgastracts. They look as if they'd just grown there."
And so, I close my eyes, breathe in the wonder, then go back to my work/play.


Image
Chinese Watercolor on Rice Paper, Anonymous, circa 1800